By Emma O'Connor
November 25, 2012
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Coffee Maker: Gourmands the world over savor the flavor of the
coffee known in
Indonesia as Kopi Luwak. The coffee gets its
taste from coffee berries that the
luwak, a kind of civet consumes
and then excretes in its stool.
Photo credit: Paula
Bronstein / Getty Images via TIME
|
Civet coffee, or Kopi
Luwat, was described as the “rarest beverage in the world” in the 2007 film The Bucket List, and it retails for £70 ($105) a cup in London—but
a less-than-glamorous scandal may be brewing for the drink. The globe’s most
expensive java, which is made from the feces of cat-like mammals called Asian
palm civets, is raising concern
among animal welfare organizations, the Guardian reports.
Producers of Kopi Luwat,
based primarily in Indonesia, are facing accusations of “horrific” abuse against
the civets, who are kept in cages and fed a diet comprised almost exclusively
of coffee berries in order to produce a usable excrement. The creation of the
pre-digested coffee has transformed from a small, rural trade to an intensive
farming industry, the Guardian notes.
Reporters from the paper visited a cafe
on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and discovered a female civet confined to a
tiny cage in the back of the shop. The Guardian also found the
creature’s two young offspring in a separate cramped enclosure, as well as 20
other civets in concealed cages on the roof of the building.
According to the paper,
animal welfare groups believe comparable civet “farms” are cropping up across
southeast Asia and creating a serious ethical problem. As of now, tens of
thousands of the animals are likely cooped up in cages and
forced to live on the unwholesome berry diet. Although civets are not
endangered, a similar species called the binturong is also used for Kopi Luwak
and has been classified as “vulnerable” by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
“The conditions are
awful, much like battery chickens,” Chris Shepherd, deputy regional director of
the conservation group Traffic South-East Asia, told the Guardian. “The civets
are taken from the wild and have to endure horrific conditions. They fight to
stay together but they are separated and have to bear a very poor diet in very
small cages.”
Shepherd said the
conservation risk comes from the high mortality rate of some civet species, as
those figures are “spiraling out of control.” He noted that there is little
public awareness about how Kopi Luwat is made.
“It would put people off
their coffee if they knew,” Shepherd said.
As of now, civet
coffee—which has been praised for its smooth, sweet taste—boasts an export
price as high as $230 per pound, the Guardian points out.
Some of the drink’s
producers have tried to distance themselves from the abuse allegations. The website for Animalcoffee, which describes
itself as a “small boutique roastery” in Indonesia, says its Kopi Luwak
comes from wild civets and it does “not farm or cultivate civets under any
circumstances.”
According to the New York Times,
there are no available statistics regarding civet coffee’s share of southeast
Asia’s broader coffee industry, but locals have expressed concerns that fake
and low-quality versions of Kopi Luwak have entered the market in a big way.
In the United States,
coffee shops such as New York City’s Porto Rico Importing Co. sell the foreign
brew, and but it remains to be seen whether there’ll be any fallout on American
shores from the animal-abuse complaints.